Hearts rules

Setup & dealing

Hearts is played by four players, each entirely for themselves — there are no partnerships. The whole 52-card deck is dealt out, 13 cards to each player. Aces are high, so within each suit the order from strongest to weakest is A, K, Q, J, 10 … 2. There is no trump suit in Hearts: a trick can only be won by a card of the suit that was led.

There is no dealer rotation to track because the deal itself grants no advantage: the player who holds the 2 of clubs always leads the first trick, whoever that turns out to be. Seats play clockwise, and in our game you sit South against Gunnar (West), Katrín (North) and Jón (East).

Passing cards

Before play starts, each player chooses exactly three cards and passes them face down to another player. The direction rotates on a fixed four-hand cycle:

All four players choose their cards before any are exchanged, so you cannot see what you are receiving before you decide what to give. You receive three cards from the player passing in your direction — pass left and you receive from your right. After the exchange, whoever now holds the 2 of clubs leads the first trick; the pass can move the opening lead from one player to another.

The pass is where most hands are won or lost. Classic choices are the A♠ and K♠ (the two cards that can be forced to win the Queen), the Queen of Spades herself when she is short of protection, and high hearts. Emptying a short side suit is just as strong: a void lets you throw penalty cards on the first safe trick in that suit. On the fourth, no-pass hand none of that repair work is available — the deal you get is the deal you play, which is why hold hands produce the wildest scores.

Trick play

The holder of the 2 of clubs must lead it to the first trick — no other opening lead is legal. Play then continues clockwise. On every trick you must follow suit if you hold a card of the suit that was led. If you are void in that suit you may discard any card, with the two exceptions below. The highest card of the led suit wins the trick, the winner collects the four cards, and the winner leads the next trick. There are 13 tricks in every hand.

• First-trick safety rule — no penalty card (no heart and not the Queen of Spades) may be discarded on the very first trick. If you cannot follow with a club you must throw a safe card. The only exception: a player whose hand is nothing but penalty cards may discard one.
• Leading hearts — you may not lead a heart until hearts have been broken, meaning a heart has already been discarded on an earlier trick. If your hand is nothing but hearts, you may lead one anyway.
• Everything else is legal — including playing the Queen of Spades whenever the follow-suit rule allows it, on any trick after the first.

Two details here are worth spelling out because casual rule pages often get them wrong. First, only an actual heart breaks hearts — discarding the Queen of Spades does not. Second, the leading restriction applies only to hearts: the Queen of Spades is a spade and may be led at any time, even on the second trick of the hand while hearts are still unbroken.

A worked trick: South leads the 9♦, West follows with the K♦, North is void in diamonds and discards the 5♥, East follows with the 2♦. West's king is the highest diamond, so West wins the trick and takes the heart with it — North's discard can never win because it is not the led suit. West now leads the next trick, hearts are officially broken, and West is one penalty point worse off.

Scoring

At the end of each 13-trick hand, every player counts the penalty cards in the tricks they captured. There are always exactly 26 penalty points in a hand:

Shooting the moon: if one player captures all 26 penalty points in a single hand — every heart plus the Queen of Spades — the scoring flips. The shooter scores 0 for the hand and each of the other three players scores 26. In our game this is automatic and there is no choice offered: the moon always adds 26 to each opponent rather than subtracting 26 from the shooter (the usual online rule, and the one that keeps a shooter at 99 from ending the game on their own terms). Taking 25 of the 26 points is not a moon — you simply score the 25.

Winning the game

Hands are played until at least one player has 100 points or more at the end of a hand. The player with the lowest total then wins. Points only land when a hand is fully scored, so the 100-point threshold is checked strictly between hands — nobody "reaches 100" mid-hand, and a moon scored in the same hand is already included in the totals being checked.

One important refinement: reaching 100 only ends the game if there is a sole lowest score. If two or more players are tied for the least points when someone crosses 100, the game continues — more full hands are dealt and played — until the tie at the bottom breaks. A finished game of Hearts therefore always has exactly one winner; there are no shared wins.

Edge cases & fine print

• The Queen of Spades does not break hearts. Hearts are broken only when a heart itself is discarded. You can drop the Queen on trick two and still be barred from leading hearts.
• The Queen of Spades can be led before hearts are broken. The no-lead rule covers hearts only; the Queen is an ordinary spade for leading purposes.
• First trick, all-penalty hand: if every card you hold is a heart or the Queen of Spades and you cannot follow the club lead, you may discard a penalty card on the first trick — the only time that is legal.
• Forced heart lead: holding nothing but hearts, you may lead a heart even though hearts are unbroken. This lead breaks hearts for everyone.
• No jack of diamonds rule: some house variants award −10 for capturing the J♦. This game does not — only hearts and the Queen score.
• Moon at 99: shooting the moon never lowers your own score; it raises everyone else by 26. A player sitting at 99 gains nothing personally from shooting except that opponents may cross 100.
• Tie continuation: a 100-point game where the two lowest players are level keeps dealing new hands (with the normal passing cycle continuing) until one of them is alone at the bottom.

Variants

What we play is the standard online ruleset, matching cardgames.io exactly: pass left/right/across/hold, 2♣ opens, no penalty cards on trick one, moon adds 26 to opponents, game to 100 with the tie-continuation rule. Common house variants you may know that are not used here:

• Moon as −26 — letting the shooter subtract 26 from their own score (sometimes with a choice of either). Not played here.
• Jack of diamonds ("Omnibus Hearts") — a −10 bonus for capturing J♦. Not played here.
• Q♠ breaks hearts — some tables treat any penalty card as breaking hearts. Here only a heart does.
• No-tricks bonus — a small reward for taking zero tricks in a hand. Not played here.
• Games to 50 or 150 — the target here is always 100.

Frequently asked questions

Related rulebooks

• Spades rules — bid your tricks — team up against the ai
• Whist rules — classic tricks, rotating trump, first to 7
• Euchre rules — bowers, trump and 5-trick showdowns
• Oh Hell! rules — bid your tricks exactly — no more, no less